Friday, June 12, 2009

Live At KSC: Watch The Unveiling Of Endeavour

NASA will unveil shuttle Endeavour at its Kennedy Space Center launch pad today as countdown clocks tick toward a planned launch early Saturday on an International Space Station assembly mission.

Endeavour and seven astronauts are scheduled to blast off from launch pad 39A at 7:17 a.m., and the weather is expected to be good to go. Forecasters with the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron say there is a 90 percent chance conditions will be acceptable for launch.

The big event this morning: NASA will roll back a towering Rotating Service Structure, leaving the shuttle in full view on its beachside launch pad on the morning before it sets sail for the station.

You can watch sequential still video of the tower rollback right here in The Flame Trench. The derrick-like gantry is scheduled to begin retracting around 10:30 a.m., and the live video feed above will refresh about every 30 seconds. The move should take about 45 minutes to an hour, and you should be able to right-click and "save picture as" to create your own gallery of STS-127 RSS rollback images.

NASA aims to start fueling Endeavour's external tank at 9:52 p.m. tonight, and the astronauts will depart crew quarters in the KSC Industrial Area and head to the pad around 3:30 a.m. Saturday.

We'll bring up live NASA TV launch commentary at 2 a.m. Saturday, and join us out on the home page -- www.floridatoday.com -- for live countdown updates and interviews with a stellar line-up of space program experts and astronauts at the top and bottom of every hour from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m.

We'll also broadcast live coverage of the post-launch NASA news conference an hour after the 7:17 a.m. liftoff. And as always, we'll have periodic updates and live NASA TV right here in The Flame Trench -- 24/7 coverage from launch to landing of NASA's 127th shuttle mission -- the longest station assembly mission to date.

An on-time launch would lead to a landing at 12:18 a.m. June 29 here at KSC.